…what we need is an ex post facto international regime with real teeth:
You test a bomb, and you face certain and total economic embargo, one
that will make the pre-emptive sanctions we have in place now seem like
a day at the polo club. Right now China should be closing its border
with North Korea, cutting off everything except food. It is only when
the lights go off in Pyongyang that the North Koreans will seriously consider giving up the bomb.
I would go a little farther than Mr. Baer.
The US should announce a policy of overwhelming retaliation in case of Nuclear Attack against ANY of our allies; to include the bombing of all medium and large cities (say, over 50,000 population) and all military facilities.
Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki confirmed Tuesday that the Obama administration is considering a controversial plan to make veterans pay for treatment of service-related injuries with private insurance.
But the proposal would be “dead on arrival” if it’s sent to Congress, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, said.
Murray used that blunt terminology when she told Shinseki that the idea would not be acceptable and would be rejected if formally proposed. Her remarks came during a hearing before the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs about the 2010 budget.
It is holiday time and it is not too late to send a little something to the troops. Many soldiers deployed won't receive any greeting cards or presents this year, some because their family doesn't have the money and some because they don't have family.
You can help make a soldier feel remembered this Christmas. Browse over to www.LetsSayThanks.com.
You pick out a card that a child drew, you pick out the greeting that will be on it and you add your name, Xerox will print your card and mail it to a soldier that is currently serving in Iraq. (They are mostly thank you cards but there are a couple holiday cards).
I have a personal reason for recommending this. A close friend is serving in his second tour in Iraq. During his first tour, he received one of these. Here is what his wife told me about it:
When GHW Bush failed to deliver the coup de grace to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and failed to support the uprisings against him in the aftermath of the 1st Gulf War, the stage was set for the current conflict.
Likewise, the failure of Clinton and the UN to effectively deal with Somolia in the 1990s leads us to the ongoing problems in that region, which has now brought us piracy at a level unseen for many decades. And now, this piracy threatens the lifeblood of modern civilization - oil.
A Saudi supertanker laden with an estimated 2m barrels of oil that was seized by pirates was on Tuesday confirmed to be anchored off the coast of Somalia.
While most other seizures have been of vessels heading into or out of the Suez Canal, the latest incident will raise question marks about the safety of the route from the Arabian Gulf to the Cape of Good Hope – a route taken by the largest oil tankers heading from the world’s main oil-producing regions to both Europe and North America.
I think his own words speak to that. The Oregonian has an article today telling us what the governor of Oregon thinks about the Iraq war…
Gov. Ted Kulongoski continues to attend nearly every funeral of Oregonians killed in Iraq. And he doesn’t believe for a minute they died defending the nation from terrorism.
"It’s all part of a message, but it is not the reason we’re there," Kulongoski said in an interview with The Oregonian. The real reason: Oil, he said.
"If they had zero oil, do you think we’d be there?"
Yes Mr. Kulongoski, I think we’d still be there. Read this post for an enumerated listing of the reason’s we’re there in the first place. We have enough proven sources of oil here in the United States to take care of our need for oil for a decent amount of time… if Democrats like yourself would let us tap them.
OK, in case you didn't know, a small bomb was detonated in New York's famed Times Square, just outside the door of a USMC recruiting office.
Now, I admit when I heard this, my first inclination was similar to many of my blogging peers, that the anti war activists had decided to take their show to the big apple, in a big way. Hot Air summarized it well:
Given the escalating protests over military recruitment, it seems inevitable that people would bomb those who seek to protect the nation and fight our enemies. This morning, unknown attackers bombed a Times Square military recruitment office.
…
Now the movement has decided to morph into domestic terrorism. Of course, the people responsible will claim that they bombed the office during the night to keep anyone from being hurt. That’s exactly the same kind of rationalization that people like the Weather Underground and the SLA used at first, anyway — that terrorism was justified by their politics. In fact, a few like William Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn still claim that.
Now is the time to fight back. If you have to wear pink just to get in under cover, do so. They are on to our plan to show up on the 12th. They are planning to stack the deck by having all code pinkos sitting in those chairs. DO NOT ALLOW THIS. Here is the e-mail I received from Move America Forward:
The radical anti-military group, Code Pink, has been paying attention to our plans to organize a pro-troop demonstration in front of the Berkeley City Council Chambers on Tuesday, February 12th. (Located at 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way in Berkeley, CA - CLICK HERE FOR A MAP).
I know that having heard about this fiasco, I wish I could have been there.
Well, Berkeley was nice enough to videotape their session, and I managed to upload to YouTube some interesting clips:
Because of the procedures they use, the main resolution asking the Marines to leave (Item 12) was not called to the floor for discussion, it was instead accepted as part of the Constant Calendar. The real debate was about the parking permit and fee waivers for Code Pink (Item 15).
But before that got started, I did find this interesting clip of Council member Olds, who spoke against Item 12 and recorded her no vote, but still managed to totally trash the Marine Corp in the process.
Yes there it is again. They can't get real jobs or go to college so they join the Marines. Of course, since the office they are protesting is an Officers Recruiting Center, that is pure nonsense, as they are specifically looking for college graduates.
I had hope that Benazir Bhutto would prove to be a moderating influence on Pakistan, and would come to some kind of power sharing agreement with President Musharraf, to combat the Islamic Fundamentalists in the nation, and provide a beacon of hope to the Muslim world. Sadly, that will never come to pass. I had considered what, exactly, to say on this, and found a link from LGF to a piece by Pamela Bone in the Australian that said it all:
Bhutto was murdered because to her enemies she was Westernised, a traitor to her culture and an American stooge. She was murdered because she had vowed to bring secularism and democracy to Pakistan. She was murdered because she was all these things, and a woman.
“I know I am a symbol of what the so-called jihadists, Taliban and al-Qa’ida, most fear,” she wrote in her autobiography, Daughter of the East. “I am a female political leader fighting to bring modernity, communication, education and technology to Pakistan.”
I believe that one reason for my decline in posting over the last few months, besides time constraints due to business, is that so many things that I want to say, have already been said, and far more eloquently, by others. Case in point is a Two-fer from Big Lizards last week:
And here’s a nice round-up of forbidden knowledge from the Republicans in the Senate, led by Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK, 100%), ranking member (and former chairman) of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works (EPW). Inhofe is a national treasure, one of the few Republicans not only willing to stand up against the greedy socialists at the UN (many Republicans do that), but also willing to put in the time to educate himself on the actual science involved.